Here from the brow of the hill I look, Through a lattice of boughs and leaves, On the old gray mill with its gambrel roof, And the moss on its rotting eaves. I hear the clatter that jars its walls, And the rushing water’s sound, And I see the black floats rise and fall As the wheel goes slowly round. I rode there often when I was young, With my grist on the horse before, And talked with Nelly, the miller’s girl, As I waited my turn at the door; And while she tossed her ringlets brown, And flirted and chatted so free, The wheel might stop or the wheel might go, It was all the same to me. ’T is twenty years since last I stood On the spot where I stand to-day, And Nelly is wed, and the miller is dead, And the mill and I are gray. But both, till we fall into ruin and wreck, To our fortune of toil are bound; And the man goes, and the stream flows, And the wheel moves slowly round.
Songs
More from Poet
-
Don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,— Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown? In the old church yard in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of the granite...
-
Don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,— Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown? In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of the granite...
-
Here from the brow of the hill I look, Through a lattice of boughs and leaves, On the old gray mill with its gambrel roof, And the moss on its rotting eaves. I hear the clatter that jars its walls, And the rushing water’s sound, And I see the black floats rise and fall As the...